Fysting

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. Hitting someone or something with a closed hand ; holding or clutching a thing tightly within the closed fingers
2. Striking a blow using a clenched hand ; grasping an object firmly with the hand closed into a fist
3. Delivering punches with a tightly closed hand ; seizing and gripping something by curling the fingers into a fist

Etymology: In Old English, the hand's clenched form was called "fȳst," and that word gave us the modern "fist." The spelling "fysting" preserves the Middle English habit of writing the long Old English vowel "ȳ" as "y," so the form is simply that older spelling of a verb and noun built on "fist" plus the "-ing" ending. The Germanic root is shared with German "Faust" and Dutch "vuist," which also mean the clenched hand. Because the word is so closely tied to its base, it has no separate origin story: the sense of striking with a closed hand arises directly from the noun, which named the hand in its gripping shape. The modern "fisting" that appears in dictionaries is the same formation, with the spelling standardised to "i."